


Samsara

by neon_flights



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Multi, Puella Magi Yosuke Magica basically, sans magical girls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neon_flights/pseuds/neon_flights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unspectacular stock boy Yosuke Hanamura sorely lacks in friends, entertainment and talent. The appearance of Yu Narukami, irritatingly mysterious new transfer student, may just be enough to solve all three problems or cause him a hundred more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caligo in somnio

**Author's Note:**

> My intention from the start was 'to write the story of Persona 4 with the environment, general format and looming despair of Puella Magi Madoka Magica' – or, if you want, 'Puella Magi Yosuke Magica without any actual magical girls'. A particular fanart inspired it, with Yosuke acting as Madoka and Yu as Homura. That could describe one out of at least ten others of this nature I've seen since then, ranging from that innocent first one to some heart-wrenching stuff I see now while glancing at the persona magica tag on tumblr as I type this before uploading this darn thing. So many ideas run around with this concept and literally take Madoka and put each of the Persona 4 characters into the places of the cast, soul gems and transformations and all. But my 'headcanons' differed there, and really tried to bring Persona to Madoka's level rather than the other way around, and that's why I wanted to write what you're going to start reading now. This series is already rife with themes on the psyche; I don't see why it shouldn't go to waste!
> 
> This has taken the most brainstorming out of any fic I've ever considered, especially when you consider Madoka's four main characters against P4's eight. Deciding who played what role and when has been quite the challenge, but a good one! Though I'm not entirely sure how much this spoils Madoka itself – if anything, it's general concepts and overtones that would be the issue. If you consider those to be spoilers (I personally would) and are concerned about that, I maybe wouldn't possibly read this fic. If you haven't seen the series yet I'd still recommend watching it anyway! I think it's excellent.
> 
> Chapters might start off with a small thing to set the theme. These vary from direct excerpts or quotes from things that aren't my own, similar things with my own take on them, and to outright original concepts from myself. They'll be sourced and credited when appropriate. This helped the writing process along a bit and I thought they'd make a nice touch for context.

_The mind is incapable of creating human faces on its own._  
_Every single one you see in your dreams has been seen by you before, no matter how brief or obscure the moment._  
_Even in passing, the mind holds onto those faces, and it never lets them go._

 

 

It's cold, but humid. It's windy, yet breezeless all at once.

The sky, dyed a red that puts blood to shame, presses down on the yellowed earth with an oppressiveness that makes the boy shiver.

He shouldn't be doing this - he  _really_  shouldn't. If his own acknowledgement isn't enough to attest to that, the shape his heart is beating into his chest is. The adrenaline floods through him as he runs in this cruel and unusual land, the littered rubble from the nearby remnants of buildings being kicked around his feet. The roads are quite literally winding and rolling, distorting into shapes not possible naturally and weird enough to be taken as something they actually aren't.

It's a world of optical illusions. Maybe it was all an illusion. Maybe not. He hoped it was, and that itself could be one.

When he slows to a stop, he stands before a large thing he could only describe as a portal. It has a hypnotic structure to it, rings of dangerous red and black shrinking towards the centre as if sucking them in and beckoning him forward. It's a disconcerting combination – of course this whole  _place_  is – and he steps back from it little. The movement dislodges a roll of yellow tape from a dip in the ground and it bounces once before it lands and begins to roll towards the portal, leaving a short trail before it becomes swallowed.

The tape is a consistent  **CAUTION - DO NOT CROSS**.

His breathing is stilted and uneven while his lungs still burn from the exertion. There's a buzzing in his ears accompanying the low drone that now adds to the detached sense of reality he can't help but feel as he stares at the rings. Every inhibition he has is  _screaming_ at him, but the boy swallows, his face set. A hand reaches up to shift the brown hair plastered to his forehead, and then back to wipe the sweat from his neck. He momentarily grabs the headphones that rest around it like it's a gesture of comfort. He suddenly feels a renewed sense of purpose for being here –  _which was what, exactly?_  – and takes a deep breath before he walks forward, taking that one last step through the horizontal rabbit hole.

It feels like walking through a film of water. In fact, it feels  _exactly_  like – like... what? The thought's there, but it peters out before it fully connects.

What now occurs induces many emotions.

This  _place_  he's been brought into - it's everything he knows, it's everything he doesn't  _quite_  love at that moment in time, and yet it isn't. Simply there, in all its ruin. The town of Inaba is a ravaged ghost of what he had become accustomed to, made even more so by the fog that chokes it. The roads that were often desolate in the small populated town are barely visible between the ruptured concrete and fallen bricks. Even the shopping district that resents him, and that he in turn also resents, is near unrecognisable if not for the very large remnant of that couldn't belong to anything other than the Moel refill station.

The drone increases to the point where he can feel it in his chest, like a heavy bass he would've felt better without. There's a good, throbbing beat that makes him bounce his head contentedly and then there's _this_. Fog seems to conceal the far distance and it does nothing but force him to advance. He could stay there if he really wanted, but he's aware that it's too chilling a sight to be standing around in this place as nonchalant as he is currently.

There is a sudden sense of presence in the air along with the mist, as if something is looming somewhere up ahead. Going by the sounds, it's something huge; something that shouldn't be real. Yosuke steps forward and then, at last, a sight of some sort finally reveals itself.

Far from where he is, on top of a building that seems pristine compared to the rest, a boy around his age stands. He doesn't,  _shouldn't_  know him, or at least he doesn't think so. He _might_ be wearing the Yasogami uniform, but it's hard to tell through this fog. It breaks once and allows Yosuke to see that his grey hair is cut short, a sword sheathed at his hip. His stance is one you could only describe as something made for battle. But there's nothing to fight against as far as he can see. What is the boy standing there for? Yosuke tries to look around to find an answer, and he feels like he's found it, but when he does it makes him take a step back and his heartbeat quickens again.

Whatever it is, it's huge. Huge enough to take over such a large portion of the sky that it makes it seem that the moon has come down, or something along those lines. Yosuke can't even make out any of its detail aside from its roundness, sheer size and, going by the boy standing over there, the imminent threat it poses. The fog really is that thick. The droning now causes him to feel a little dizzy, but he tries to shake this off. He can only guess it's the thing in the sky causing it, as well as the cause of the destruction of everything else around him. Yosuke at least hopes it is, because if not, it means there's another potentially massive thing around that he can't see yet. He shudders at the idea and looks back down again.

The boy raises his hand and with a yell of something, he clenches it shut. A fierce blue light envelops him, and at this point, Yosuke  _swears_ that something comes out of him. Again he fails to make anything out save for its size, which seems to be about three times that of the boy's.

He desperately tries to keep track of this boy and the figures that surround him, but again the fog obscures it all. All he can do is track his silhouette, which makes it all the worse when Yosuke sees a burst of light followed by the airborne figure being smacked away. The grounded one suddenly launches into the air and flies a horrifying distance (but not as far as the larger did, who Yosuke can't even see anymore), scattering the smaller things that look gooey in texture and slams to the ground to collide straight into a broken pillar. Yosuke feels his heart skip a beat and he rushes forward, forgetting the massive distance between the two, but the boy seems to be able to move again despite what just occurred and stands up. Something about him feels  _wrong_ , especially after enduring something that should have incapacitated him with such ease. Instead of collapsing, he summons yet another figure – one with a different shape this time that's less humanoid, more like an animal or something – and it zooms towards the floating entity with a green glow around it, like that landing hadn't even happened.

He feels words coming out of himself that aren't entirely voluntary, but it makes it clearer than ever how his throat feels dry as the semi-desert he stands on and has been as such for a while now.

"Wh... what does he think he's  _doing_?"

Drier still when he hears something  _respond_.

"Fighting a one-sided battle, by the looks of it."

Yosuke whips away from the scene to face his side, where the sight of the stranger that just spoke greets him. He's standing in what seems to be a work uniform. It's difficult to make out his appearance otherwise, as Yosuke finds he can't look directly at him for reasons he doesn't know. Still, he vaguely watches him watch the battle with no trace of anything in his gaze. With a little more inspection, it's simply quiet observation and never anything more than that. Detachment. Passiveness. The brunet turns back as well – what else  _can_  he do? - and they look on together.

The grey-haired boy has moved in that short space of time and he's currently smacking away at some malformed shapes at his feet with his blade, occasionally looking upwards and making some sort of gesture that may be causing the larger figure to attack with something different going by the various colours of light that reach his eyes. Yosuke can't tell if he's being overpowered or not and this somehow worries him more than knowing for certain.

"Why is... can't something done about this?" he asks, unable to hold back the quiver in his voice when the grey-haired boy barely dodges another beam of light sent his way from the sphere in the sky. "This... this is  _terrible!_ H-He's fighting those things all on his own and he could be  _losing_  for all we know, and there's no one around who can help—"

Red eyes glint in the shade. "There's not much that can be done on  _his_  part, no."

He watches for a while longer – watches the boy flicker and miraculously dodge an entire _building_ thrown at him and asks himself what is happening all over again - and only then notices the emphasis in the stranger's sentence.

"But... what about me?  _I'm_ here, right?"

At the sides, their smile curls. "Indeed, you are."

The boy manages to sit up once more, having been knocked down again at some point, but it seems a greater effort. Yosuke watches him intently as the fog lightens a little. He can see enough to tell that the boy's looking around him, and when he seems to face them, his eyes light up in horrified recognition when he sees Yosuke. He waves his arm furiously at him in a sort of swatting motion, like he's trying to move the fog away. What is this meant to mean? Yosuke's mind is still churning through too many other ideas to consider it further. He clenches the front of his jacket with both hands as words form on his mouth.

"So...  _I_  could help him? I  _can_  help... can't I?"

"Well, as you are now, you're useless."

_Oh, of course,_  Yosuke thinks, and clenches tighter. It's exactly the answer he expects. He may as well have turned around at the portal and gone on with his life. What does he ever plan on doing here, anyway?

_**God, Hanamura, were you**_ **always** _**this useless?** _

_**-and you can't even do**_ **that** _**right. What'd you even come in for?** _

_**I asked you to do**_ **one thing**   _ **and you just—** _

"However," Yosuke snaps to attention as their voice breaks through all of that, whatever 'that'  _is_ , "that doesn't mean we can't change that. Do you  _want_  to help this boy?"

Another beam shoots out and with a horrific  _crack_  that bounces off what remains around them, the area where the boy stands starts to crumble. He tries to scramble to his feet, but his speed only encourages the dissolving of his perch, and only one leg stands supported. Not for long, though.

"I can save him?" breathes the brunet. "Can I  _really_   _do_  something about this?"

He watches him fall again - it's like a train wreck, really; can't tear those eyes away because  _nothing ever happens_  – with the boy's arm stretched out towards him, mouth open in a plea that he cannot hear.

"Of course."

Yosuke turns back to look at the stranger once more – looks up at them to see their hand held out, palm upwards, and carefully neutral in their expression.

"Take my hand, and I will help you rise."

There are a lot of things about this that ring bells in his head. The gameshow kind and the warning kind mingle together in a cacophony of noise, but other than that Yosuke's mind feels pleasantly empty. So many things go wrong, and things finally look like they'll go up for once, so why not?

Down and down the boy goes into an abyss that Yosuke can't see the bottom of, and he decides to bridge that gap and reach out for himself.

Dazedly he watches his hand rise into the air, and then blinks. All he sees is a plain matt colour ahead of him as his hand grasps at nothing. He blinks some more and things start to blur in and out of focus, only to find there's not much _to_ focus on anymore. His hand falls down and lands across his chest with a  _plop_ , and he wonders why it feels like he's pressed up against such a cushy wall on his tip-toes in the first place.

Then his bearings somewhat rectify themselves with the update that he isn't standing anymore and is seeing the world horizontally. Sunlight courses through slightly parted curtains and peals the room with its glow. The smell of eggs in the pan assails his senses, a very distant humming to accompany it, and his senses readjust.

It is morning once more and Yosuke was awake.

Once again, he blinked dazedly at his ceiling and wondered for a moment what it was doing there all of a sudden, like it shouldn't have been there at all and the typically overcast Inaba skies were meant to be his morning greeting.

Suddenly his alarm started to beep out and he smacked at it with the energy of a slug. With how he felt at the time, he could have been more astonished that he woke up before it for once. It always seemed easier to get up at the start of the semester, and it wouldn't be much longer before his sleep routines reverted to their beautifully horrendous state like they were before the holidays.

Thinking about this reminded him that it was the first day of school that day. Sudden dread aside, Yosuke Hanamura was  _finally_  a second-year. Now that he was someone's senpai – not even that,  _multiple_  someones – that would mean there'd be a chance of some of them becoming his friends or giving him a bit of respect for once, right?

He remembered where he lived and who he was and gave an empty groan as he faceplanted onto his bedroom floor. It could have been worse; he landed an inch from a box of plectrums that could have been something disastrous.

  
* * * 

 

After several minutes of staring at shower tiles and feeling vaguely philosophical, Yosuke stumbled into the kitchen no more awake than he was before. Even the smell of food failed to rouse him, but it didn't stop him from sitting down in front of a modestly filled plate and his stomach gurgling in pleasantness.

"Morning honey," he vaguely remembered hearing as he grabbed his chopsticks. He muffled something incoherent in reply.

His mother, the quieter of his parents, went back to cooking more eggs while humming softly. Yosuke didn't recognise the tune this time, but at least the phase of humming the Junes theme song had long died off. Those few weeks after they had moved into town were slightly more painful that way. Whether it was a sickening of the song or what the song represented, it would be a mystery to everyone.

His father sat across him at the table with a plate speckled with crumbs in front of him, frowning into the paper he was engrossed in. With sense beginning to fill his head, Yosuke honestly wondered why anyone in this family still read it, or anyone in town, for that matter. There was the occasional time when it raved about the continual success of the famous Amagi Inn; otherwise it was full of the usual deadbeat town drivel, like  _Woman Charged With Theft of Steak Croquette_  or  _Man Sees Cuckoo_. Times like those made it mildly entertaining at best, but Yosuke would have had to try really hard to see it. It never stopped Dad from glossing over it though, possibly trying to get into the heads of his extended customers or some dumb-ass thing like that.

As someone who was often coined the regular stock boy, Yosuke wouldn't have known what managing Junes was like, personally. As unwelcome as Junes was to... well, just about everyone, it certainly didn't stop them from shopping there. Or delivering their complaints to Yosuke himself, who only ever just stood there for the kind, kind customer service they expect from him when they pull him from the stock rooms and have him on the sales floor that he attempts but never quite achieves, quite like how he gets paid much less for it than he would want. As the days went on, it got slightly worse, but it turned out to be another speck on Junes' growing list of necessary evils. The pains of being the manager's son would only leave when his parents did, or perhaps Yosuke himself. As he thought about all of his, he sighed and eventually began to gnaw on the fried eggs his mother had put on his plate about halfway through his musing.

Eating his breakfast was as mindless an affair as it always was, his parents chatting idly about this and that over work-related things he'd learned to tune out by that stage. Ideally Yosuke would want to finish and leave before they do, before they get a chance to ask (in reality, kindly force) him to cover yet another shift that comes hurtling out of nowhere to smash any of Yosuke's hopes for an afterschool plan into little pieces. In this rare case, the grinding of his father's chair against the ground was  _not_  succeeded by a stern call of his name, but rather a quick goodbye and a kiss to his wife's cheek before a swift exit.

He marvelled over this for a bit and became dimly aware of how he usually had to leave not long after his dad to get to school on time. His mother might have said something to that effect, which glossed over his ears. After mumbling a quick 'yeah, see ya' and a second occurrence of a scraping chair, Yosuke went to grab his school things that he always,  _always_  neglected to pack the night before no matter how much he complained about it to himself and no one else.

There was no one else other than himself to really listen, anyway.

The sunshine, with its impeccable timing, had decided to make itself scarce around the time Yosuke left for school. He recalled marching out the door straight into a puddle, soaking the cuffs of his overlong trousers, and a raindrop from the house's roof landing right in his eye before he swore and stomped back into the house to dig out an umbrella from somewhere. Cycling while holding it over him was hard, and Yosuke didn't  _want_  to get wet, but unfortunately those three things weren't mutually exclusive.

He became vaguely aware that any form of that combination posed a threat to his health as well as everyone else's when he found he was unable to see very well through the deluge. Yosuke relied on his foggy memory of where dangerous things were located (streetlights, trash cans, stray cats, stray students) on top of his already foggy memory of the route to school itself. Winter break was just behind summer break when it came to doing an excellent job of emptying his brain of anything useful.

It was when he agreed with himself on this notion that he neglected to remember  _that_ particular streetlight when he attempted a wobbly turn about a minute away from the hill leading to the school's entrance. There was a loud crash and a dull crack as his bike crushed his schoolbag and a world full of bright pangs and stars and pain, oh god the  _pain_. Yosuke had fallen off the bike into a standing position but the combination of his nether-regions meeting the post on top of experiencing the shock of the collision wasn't too healthy for his manhood. He hoped no one saw that. Everyone probably did, going by the following silence between raindrops that persisted even before the crash, but he was used to pretending. Yosuke decided to walk the rest of the way after that, sore as it was.

Between it being the first day of school and having his nuts cracked (it pained him even more to even  _think_  this), how much worse could things get? Yosuke found his question answered after he had trudged past the cherry blossoms at the entrance, annoyingly pink against the dark skies, and had already sat down gingerly in his designated classroom ready to listen to nothing at all.

The door had slid open moments later to allow a slouching man to stomp in, grumbling darkly. Yosuke restrained a groan. He'd heard of this teacher, and literally heard him at times from several rooms across. Kinshiro Morooka seemed to  _hate_  kids, and why he taught them was a mystery to everyone. Yosuke figured he only did it for the holidays. Infamous among students and staff alike for being overtly terrible, it already looked to be a promising year full of tongue-lashing and overbite.

"You!" Within seconds he had already barked at one of the students who had raised his head to see him enter. "What're  _you_  lookin' at?"

The boy looked somewhere between annoyed and terrified at the outburst, but decided to be smart and stayed silent. Yosuke thought this would be a good time to rest his head on the desk before he got yelled at for having eyes, too, and figured he may as well hide them while wallowing in his own pain and misery. Morooka was starting to speak again anyway, now situated at the front of the classroom.

"Alright you cretins,  _listen up!_ Y'got a new student joining your class. Guess he's decided to grace our presence by coming all the way from the filth of the city, probably to prove a point or some shit like—"

A transfer in this town was rare; to Yosuke's knowledge, the most recent case of it was himself. Still wasn't enough to get him to raise his head, though. After more prescribed ranting and an odd pause, Morooka eventually spat towards the open door.

"Get your ass  _over_  here, Narukami; we don't have all day!"

The rumble of chatter from the classroom quieted when a different set of footsteps played under it. The dampened click of his heels seemed to draw enough attention, but not Yosuke's, who was still lounging in his own languidness. Some of the girls started to whisper to one another; bits and pieces of 'where's he from?' and 'wow, he's  _hot_ ' managed to drift over, mindless as they were. All that was on Yosuke's mind was how he wanted to go home  _right now,_ _ **god**_  and he raised his head in annoyance at this situation and suddenly he sat rigid and his head emptied.

A grey bowl-cut, and grey eyes that were so,  _so_  blank, with a face just as bad for it.

Yosuke promptly froze over.

_Holy shit_  - it was  _him_. The  _dream guy_.

He then retracted that thought – 'dream guy'? He sounded like a  _girl_  – and instead dubbed him as just The Guy, and stared openly at him with enough sense to keep his jaw closed. He probably wasn't the only one; he had that sort of look about him that drew every eye. Even through the mist of his unconscious recollection Yosuke could tell that this was the exact same person from his dream. His height, how he stood, the way he wore his jacket open... the popped collar would have made this new kid look like some kind of douchebag to some, but in the way he held himself, Yosuke couldn't help but think how misleadingly false that was. He watched the room with a degree of apathy, no trace of any kind of expression from the moment he set foot inside of it.

Yosuke felt himself brought back to reality when Morooka made a sudden movement. He was surly even in his attempt to grab some chalk – something only he could accomplish - only to fall short and have the new guy beat him to the punch, alarming the rest of room that wasn't already enthralled. He began to write the first character of his name before the teacher had a chance to blink and then the male students were starting to whisper too, with full reason. Yosuke knew as well as anyone how Kinshiro Morooka was  _not_  someone to mess with, and obviously his demeanour wasn't enough to scare The Guy into docility. Amazingly, the man didn't comment, though it seemed his overbite was a little more biting than usual. In no time at all the chalk had been set down and the student, with Morooka looking a little redder, turned around to face the class that he'd already won over in seconds to introduce himself. Glancing at the board again, Yosuke looked over the guy's name.

_Is that..._   _Yu..._  Narukami _? Can't be right. But if it is, that's certainly a ballsy name for a ballsy guy_. Or maybe he was just an idiot and everyone was getting keyed up for disappointment; a wishful thought.

"My name is Yu Narukami." The boy spoke out in a firm and even tone for how quiet it was. "I moved to Inaba quite recently from Tokyo. It's nice to meet you all."

He closed with the shortest of bows, while Yosuke wondered which part of Tokyo he had come from, having hailed from there himself. It already started to annoy him a little, having this new kid look so comfortable standing up there it was unbearable, as if he'd been there forever. His own experience was more of an experience for the all wrong reasons; Yosuke was probably the first transfer in years. This new guy at least had him as a prelude and, as much as he didn't like to acknowledge it, had a bit more unforced charisma than Yosuke did at the time. He hoped people wouldn't start to compare them – they already shared the city they lived in. It was more realistic to hope that they had forgotten exactly where Yosuke came from at all.

"Says here your parents are working overseas," Morooka said loudly as he flipped through what was probably his file; likely for the first time, as well. Yosuke suppressed a snicker at the real possibility that this was probably an attempt to get back at Narukami for the chalk thing, throwing any caution about telling other students his private information to the wind. "Hah! Dumped their baggage in some nowhere town while they ran away across the ocean? They must  _adore_  you."

What the transfer student accomplished then was a sneer that didn't seem to include any mouth movement, just a slight narrow at the sides of the eyes before they returned to normal again; clearly  _not_  the response Morooka wanted, who just  _hmph_ 'd and threw the file to his desk again while several students looked at each other. Meanwhile, Narukami still didn't stop standing there as if he'd been there all his life and had swept over the room with eyes of quicksilver that felt an awful lot like they were settled on  _Yosuke_  now. When he realised this, he glanced away for a moment to ponder over nothing in particular and then looked back to discover that yep, he  _was_  looking in his direction, and still doing it. He couldn't help but give an uncomfortable shift under his strong gaze.

What was he staring at? Was there something on his face? Did the pole leave a mark on his face as well as his... goods? Not that he knew, he didn't  _check,_ but they smarted enough for that to be a possibility. Maybe he  _should_ have checked. How long was it going to be until class broke out? He could nip into the bathroom real quick... Yosuke had sat there thinking about his junk and this dude was  _still_ staring! What a day this was turning out to be.

Though after a quick two and two, it made sense; the only remaining seat in the classroom was the one literally under his nose. Yosuke just happened to lie within his path of sight. That was all it was. He gave a mental bristle at himself for being so silly about this whole thing.

Satonaka raised her hand, he then noticed, and said something to the tune of pointing the seat out to the new student. Not like he needed to be told; he had already pierced a hole through it with his eyes by that stage, travelling straight on and through Yosuke's brain and it would have explained why he felt so confused by everything. The new guy made his way over to the chair awfully quick; too quick to be  _ordinary_. Or Yosuke really did hit his head off that pole. He cursed under his breath once Narukami seated himself and he shifted. He didn't hear him, did he? Yosuke hoped not. Last thing he wanted was this guy all up in his business for something so little and so stupid. He was having a really, _really_ sucky morning and it was the last thing he wanted by that stage.

First day meant a whole day of Morooka parading his blatant disgust for anyone under thirty, it seemed. Yosuke sat through it and all of the other pastoral issues with a perfected daze of zero attention. Even if he did listen he wouldn't remember any of it anyway. When would he ever want to come and talk to this guy if  _he_  had issues? Morooka had plenty of his own.

By the last time he looked at the clock, the teacher had already left after an unusual call for staff on the school's P.A. system. People were getting up but not leaving, instead going to talk to classmates, making Yosuke then realise he did hear the part of the call where they were told not to leave the classroom until they were told. It surprised him that there wasn't at least one person going towards the door; like someone such as Yukiko Amagi, who would have had things outside school to attend to, but the girl dressed in red remained quite dignified in her seat, waiting. Maybe it was the thick fog that made the windows almost opaque that deterred anyone from going outside.

He then became vaguely aware that quite a few female voices had condensed around one part of the room. Without moving it sounded as if there are about four or five girls crowded around the new student's desk, making friendly conversation and asking politely about things no one cared about.

Damn high-school girls; always so nosey about any new blood that came within ten feet of them, especially in a town like this where it could be gold dust. Yosuke had received similar treatment at the beginning when he had transferred, too, and he lamented a little over the fact that that was the most attention he had ever received since he first moved into Inaba, Junes drama notwithstanding. He gave a grumbling sigh and turned his head as he laid it on the desk. It was going to be some time before he'd have reason to move again.

"Yosuke Hanamura."

The voice, so sure and concise in its delivery, startled him, causing Yosuke's head to suddenly shoot up from its place and he found himself nose to nose with the new student himself sans female attention, staring at him just as blankly as he had before. Yosuke made a noise that was  _not_ a squawk, leaping back in surprise and barely concealed embarrassment at being so close to this stranger all of a sudden. After his heartbeat and the legs on his chair rocked back into normalcy, he blinked owlishly and glanced around him, making sure that there weren't any other potential Yosuke Hanamuras around that he may have been talking to instead of him. He then gave his answer, not like it was a question... how'd he even get his full name, anyway?

"Y-Yeah, that's me."

"Morooka wanted me to go to the faculty office once school was over, but..." Narukami's gaze flickered to the left, potentially at the door. "They're all meeting there right now, aren't they? I suppose I can wait outside until they're finished. Would you be able to take me there?"

_Oh._  That was all he wanted. Then what was Yosuke so worried about? He deflated and felt very puzzled with himself again, which seemed to spread to Narukami himself.

"Is there a problem?" he asked, eyebrow raised. It might have been out of concern. "I'm not planning to leave yet, if that's what you're thinking..."

"N-No, 'course not!" And in Yosuke's self-deprecation, he almost ignored the guy! He was making a dreadful mess out of this, and a terrible impression to boot, wasn't he? ...Why did that even matter? Shaking his head, he scooted out of his seat and flashed his usual smile at him. "C'mon, I'll show you. School's not  _that_  big."

He tried not to make a show of opening the door for them both and then closing it after them, but it still felt like he did. Once it clicked into place, the sound felt a lot like the sealing of someone's fate somewhere. An oddly specific thought, but it was gone before Yosuke even came close to heeding it.

   
* * *

 

The office wasn't that far away, only being a floor below the one they were on currently. It was as distant as their conversation was lively, which ranked somewhere between a potted plant and a dead cat. Narukami hadn't even looked back at Yosuke since they left the classroom, walking slowly while the other treaded behind him, slower still. The brunet tightened his posture and attempted to speak through the quietness of the corridor.

"Soooo. Narukami, was it?"

The attempt hung in the air like a bad scent. Yosuke swallowed and began to find it too difficult to look at the other boy anymore. He sounded desperate, didn't he? Wouldn't have been the first time.

"Nice name," he added, and realised there was truth through his grasping. Anyone with a family name like 'thunder god' carried a bit of expectancy to be an unbelievably cool person. Yosuke couldn't exactly deny it considering how much he felt like he really shouldn't be walking with this boy right now. "Sounds... cool. Not like mine, mine's just... yeah." Or following him, to be more accurate. The student turned yet another corner before he got the chance and Yosuke restrained a small frown.

Then, after some more silence, "...Yu is fine with me, if you'd prefer."

Yosuke blinked and looked up at him, quite surprised. That was certainly... sudden, if he said what he thought he said. His first time talking to this guy and he was already apparently on first-name basis? He hadn't even looked him when he said it. It didn't particularly bother Yosuke or anything - in a strange way he welcomed the fact that Narukami was comfortable enough around  _him_ of all people to do that one thing - it was just... well,  _strange_. Who would have thought this guy would be so (open, he realised, didn't seem at all like the correct word to be using with this person)  _intimate_ (but why was _this_  the right one?) with someone else off the bat? He certainly didn't seem the type who would; he hadn't even made an expression outside of what appeared to be closely perfected deadpan since he'd arrived, he bet... Yosuke tried not to think too much about that.

Despite it all, he attempted to keep the confusion out of his returned smile, and hoped that his responding tone sounded flattered or appreciative or something else that reflected general positivity.

"Ah, right. Yu, then..."

And even at that, this sudden informal behaviour put a damper on any further possible conversation Yosuke could have attempted. He tried to not comment on the now extremely blatant fact that it was  _Yu_  leading the way to the office and not... well,  _him_. He asked to be taken there, so what was the point of this? Suddenly every corridor felt ominous in steadily increasing amounts. He gave an apprehensive swallow, almost a gulp.

"Is something the matter?"

Yosuke jumped. How did Yu manage to even  _hear_ that from where he was? "W-Wha'? No! It's, ah... good. It's fine."

He glanced from side to side to find that there were no other students around. The announcement had been surprisingly successful in keeping the student body in place. Maybe its combination with the fog really  _did_ creep all of them out enough to keep them inside. It might have been the red and blue lights flashing by the windows that garnered the rubbernecking curiosity that seemed to plague this boring town and kept them in their place. Regardless, the lack of any company other than this strange boy's wasn't much comfort.

They were at the bridge between the main building and the practice building now, which wasn't exactly nowhere near the faculty office, but they were taking a much longer route than they needed to. Yosuke started to wonder if Yu really didn't know where he was going all this time and was just wandering aimlessly, making him feel very stupid and yet not thinking the same about the other boy at all. Again, not the first time.

"You do know you could've taken the stairs we passed before, right?" he put delicately. As delicately as Yosuke could have managed, anyway. "We don't have to go to the practice building to get there."

The sureness Yu replied with unnerved him. "I know."

When Yosuke lifted his head to look at him again, he found that the newcomer had already turned to stare at Yosuke openly, cutting off any reply he could have had prepared. Even _he_  could tell this guy wanted something from him, but he'd be damned if he knew was it was. The heavy fog outside the windows gave the impression of the two being confined in a suspended tunnel, Yosuke going further to imagine Yu was blocking his path rather than intending to say something.

The frigid evils the transfer student was giving him melded into a more measuring look that seemed too  _aware_ to be coming from someone who wasn't serious. His voice came forward, cold and sharp like metal.

"Yosuke Hanamura... do you consider your current life a good one?"

"Huh?"

Yosuke was finding himself staring blankly at this person far too much (and this was  _after_ they had left the classroom, where he wasn't situated behind Yu anyway) having only been in each other's presence in this case for a matter of minutes. It must have been giving him the  _worst_  impression, like he was some sort of doofus... and there he went again with the impressions. It  _really_  didn't matter. Though to be fair, it was a  _weird_ question. He wasn't even sure he truly understood what he was asking. Or what was going on, for that matter. And why did he keep referring to him with his full name like that? Yu, whose mouth turned slightly, went on.

"Do you like things as they are now? School, family, work... is there anything you have ever wished you had done that you hadn't?"

Just when he thought the creep factor couldn't be turned any more up to eleven. "I... guess?" ventured Yosuke. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scuffed a shoe against the wooden floor. "I mean... sure, it sucks to have everyone blabbing behind my back about Junes and all, and I complain about it a lot, but it isn't  _that_  bad."

He only realised then how little sense that spiel would have made to a stranger, which this kid was, but it didn't seem to deter Yu from throwing him yet another strange question.

"Then what about you as a person? Is there something about yourself you wish you  _didn't_ have?"

Yosuke managed to keep a mindless "uhhhhh" from escaping there, which he quietly congratulated himself on, but it was obvious the other wasn't finished yet.

"Something deep inside you... a part of you that you would never want anyone to see or know about, even if they were your closest friends. Something you might even hate yourself for. Do you feel that something like that exists in you?"

His words were rife with enigma and other things beyond Yosuke's understanding, which only made him feel even more uncomfortable than he was. His elaboration didn't make anything any clearer than it was before. A part of you that you don't want people to see... was he talking about secrets? Of course he had secrets; who didn't? Was Yu asking him what they were or something? Yosuke had the feeling that that wasn't exactly what he meant and abandoned that line of thought. After a while he realised it had gone beyond the socially acceptable time for a reply and it made him feel anxious as he struggled to think of an educated answer, in the harsh gaze of someone who appeared to be as interested in his response as the question was deep.

"Dunno..." he stumbled out, "I... guess I-"

"Would you say you care about others as much as yourself? What lengths would you go to to help those around you?"

What this guy was getting at was a complete and utter mystery to Yosuke, and these questions were really starting to bother him in ways he didn't think he could be bothered. What did all of this even  _mean_  and why was he asking  _him_  all of this? His visible discomfort must've been strong enough to make Yu suddenly become less harsh in his everything, and he let out a small sigh.

"It's... nothing. Don't think too hard about it." For the first time, he glanced off into the distance, limited with fog as it was. "Just... if you don't like how things are, don't become something you're not, and  _should_  not, even if you think you  _have_  to... even if you think you have the best reason in the world for it."

Never before had Yosuke felt such a desire to  _understand_ , because Yu's words seemed important even though they were confusing and he wasn't too sure  _why_  he felt that way, but he looked up to realise that they had stopped outside the faculty office and Yu was looking at him as if he was waiting for him to do something. He wasn't even aware they had started to walk again. How deep in a rut did you have to be to not realise you were going down a  _staircase_? Yosuke gave himself a mental shake as ineffective as the ones previous. A tumble down some steps wouldn't have gone unappreciated at this point, he realised.

"I'm going to wait outside until the meeting is over." Yu reminded him he existed again. "I think they'll start letting people go home soon. You should probably go pack your things."

"Ah, right." Yosuke ignored the sureness in the boy's voice and instead took it as dismissal. That was fine; he'd done what he came here to do, after all. A favour which consisted of nothing but him unwittingly following the transfer student around the school like a sheep for no particular reason, but had run its course nonetheless. "Well, if you say so."

As he made to leave, Yosuke felt a pair of piercing eyes on him right up until he turned the corner. He couldn't recall hearing anything move from back there, doors  _or_ people, even as he climbed the stairs to return to his classroom; the stairs he had intended to use to bring his new classmate down to the office in the first place.

Well.

That was different.


	2. Vocanti ursus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will never be happy with the very small parts of this chapter that caused it to take years to go up (and they'll be very obvious, because they are Bad), so fuck it, here we go. more to come, much much sooner (she says). now away with ye.

_—He will not know yet if this encounter is a mere coincidence or a necessity._  
_Whichever, it would be an encounter that would change his destiny—_

When Yosuke came back to the classroom, the door opened to reveal... fuck all, to be frank. Nothing had changed whatsoever in the time he'd been away. Many students still stood around the windows, speculating while they tried to peer through the fog at what lay beyond. The rest were still gossiping around their desks. It didn't look as if anyone took any notice of him leaving with Yu earlier despite their instructions not to. If they did, they didn't seem to care he returned. On further observation, Yosuke didn't think they noticed he came back at all.

He couldn't help a _tch_ at this behaviour as he slid the door shut with more force than necessary. But, in a way, Yosuke couldn't blame them. Confined to the one room for the time being, and with Inaba being so dull? A mystery like this was probably as close to exciting as this deadbeat town could manage.

It didn't seem like he was going to be able to leave soon, at any rate. Yosuke spent the next while hunched over his desk with his arms folded and his head nested in the little hollow they made in the centre. He mulled over Yu's strange not-a-conversation, rolling the mysterious boy's words around with the hope of understanding them better if they banged off the sides of his skull. He was so absorbed in this that he didn't notice the shadow looming over him.

"Yo," came a voice from above. "Hanamura."

_A part of me I don't want to admit to others...? What's that even meant to mean?_  
  
The lines in Yosuke's frown deepened. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. He got little out of this other than fuel for a slow-burning headache as it came bumbling into his awareness.

"Ha—na—mu—raaaa. Hellooo? Earth to Junes!"

"Junes is _on_ Earth, stupid," he replied absently, then bristled. Yosuke grasped at his desk to sit up to scowl at his visitor once he realised who was there. "Wait – I have a _name_ , Satonaka!"

"Which you ignored," Satonaka said with a snort, "like, a million times. Good job on that, by the way."

_Yu's already messed up my head, I do_ not _need this too._ Yosuke sighed and raised an arm to rest his chin on his hand, while he made a point of looking at anything other than his classmate.

"Whatever, just don't call me _Junes_. I wouldn't even care if you called me Yosuke, you know. Everyone at school who's seen me at work does already." Everyone who didn't refer to him as 'the manager's son', anyway. There were enough of those types as it was. Nipping the problem in the bud wasn't an option when it had bloomed already. It reminded him of one of those nasty Junes-brand sunflowers; highly suspect and a potential threat to Yosuke's health if it survived beyond four days. Encouraging people to stick with his first name was just easier.

"Well, as much as I love having you waste my precious time, I'm here for a reason." Satonaka leaned forward and made grabby hands at him. "You have something precious of mine. C'mon, cough it up! You said you'd have it for me today."

Yosuke doubted if this had any legitimacy to it, but as luck would  _not_ happen to have it, he did remember to bring 'it' today. The day Fate decided to bring him and a telegraph pole together in a great collision, crushing his schoolbag between his legs, his bike, and the ground all at once. He held back a moan in Satonaka's company for his own sake. He didn't think his privates would ever recover from the ordeal. It would've taken a miracle for the DVD case to go through the same measures with the disc she was looking for unscathed. He swallowed.

"Um, yeah. About that—"

Yosuke said a bunch of crap as he rifled around in his bag for the case, making a long and half-hearted effort of it.

"It was amazing, like... uh, how they moved, and stuff--" His fingers grazed over wrinkled plastic and he restrained a yelp of panic. "--it was really... cool, yeah." Maybe if he didn't look at it, it wouldn't actually be as bad as he thought. Tearing the DVD from his bag and holding it in front of her with both hands, Yosuke bowed so low he faced the floor. "H-Here you go!"

He felt Satonaka swipe the case from his grasp and held his breath when he heard her open it. Slowly, he raised his head back up again. Yosuke met with the sight of Satonaka staring blankly down at the open case where the disc sat. In the infintesimally small moment before Satonaka's expression changed, Yosuke saw how the disc had cracked right down the middle, almost in two. Most ominously, almost prophetically, it ran through the middle of the posing master's legs.

Satonaka's eyes flashed at him. He heard a noise that just might have been rumbling growl of a wildcat.

Yosuke very much regretted her taste in movies now and wished it to be more of the chick flick and harmless cutesy animal story variety. Movies which would not fill Satonaka's head with images of Flying Dragon Kicks, Tiger Nut Busters and Other Painful Capitalised Things. For someone with already violent tendencies, the fire did _not_ need more fuel.

The action itself was short-lived, but this did little to stop it from lasting Yosuke an eternity. Strike number two to the groin of the day seemed to break the pain barrier and go beyond into another plane of agonising existence. Few others could have compared their classmate's might to that of a steel cold lamp post. The girl must have been too caught up in the adrenaline of the crotch-kick to grill him for any real compensation afterwards – Yosuke couldn't call this good fortune, not at _all_ – for she had already left the room before he even hit the floor.

A faint buzzing still permeated his ears for a while afterwards. This might have been the sound of any chance he had at reliable fertility in the future whizzing out the window, deep into the fog to be lost forever. Yosuke _hated_ his life.

Some time after this, the school began to allow students to leave in small groups. Yosuke almost missed this callout at some point between life and death. There had been particular encouragement to head straight home. What a wonderful idea, Yosuke thought. He stumbled out of the class and into the foggy depths of the school grounds a lost and confused man. How he managed to make his way home was anyone's guess.

 

* * *

 

What caused the school's lowkey lockdown dominated the evening news. A body, they said, hanging from an antenna in the shopping district. Mayumi Yamano, they elaborated, was murdered with no known cause of death. The district didn't fall on Yosuke's route home, so he had no way of knowing about this until he returned. With the day he had, however, nothing interested him more than going to bed and forgetting everything ever happened as best as he could.

Yosuke was blessed with a night of dreamless sleep, much to his surprise. He guessed his body had decided he'd had enough to deal with for one day, and that he was better off without god knew whatever else his brain would do with the day's memories overnight. Despite this, he woke up not feeling as rested as he could have. He couldn't recall any dreams this time, though. As it was, he figured he would just count his blessings. With the way his current track record was going, Yosuke dreaming about that one new student again would be too much. It would be as enigmatic and cryptic as the student himself, and he was _so_ done with that. Diving headfirst into the Inaba river and never resurfacing sounded more appealing to him, to be honest.

The following morning was still overcast and damp, but the rain had stopped. Yosuke had no bike to make the commute to school this time. He left it behind at school and probably unlocked, too. After considering the wellbeing of his testicles, he could call it a happy accident of sorts. It didn't seem all too likely anyone would try to steal it. Good luck to anyone who'd try, he thought vehemently. Karma was likely to bite them in the ass anyway, in the form of the bike maybe killing them.

When he entered the classroom later, it surprised him to see someone sat in front of his desk in his approach. Well, this was still almost anticipated. The concept just hadn't factored into the whole messed up equation yet. While the other students stirred up a new cloud of mutters and whispers, the newest addition to the class sat with total disinterest. His head turned back when he heard Yosuke's footsteps come to a halt.

Should he say something? As he contemplated this, Yosuke became more sensitive to the feeling of the strap of his school bag digging into his shoulder. Should he say _nothing_? Better idea.

"G... g'mornin'." _Balls. So much for that._ Well, he could at least be glad he hadn't said ''sup, Dream Dude Guy'.

"Good morning," Yu replied, as smooth as he was the previous day.

About three feet and firm eye contact were all they had between them and even this almost felt too much. There was something intense about Yu's look - even if it looked empty all the same - that made it hard to break away first. Yosuke felt he was getting more and more keyed up as it went on, and unnecessarily so. But the moment ended at last as Yu gave a slow blink and faced forward again without comment. Yosuke felt all his tension shatter in a most fabulous and anti-climactic way.

_Oh, alright. Fine. Whatever. Guess you've said your piece._

He slammed his bookbag onto the surface of his desk and stared at it without opening it. The anger Yosuke felt confused him. He wasn't too certain what else he could have expected, though. Did he even want any sort of friendship with this guy? Yu was a tad on the weird side, even if he did seem like a decent person. Well, on the principle of oversimplifying his spiel from the previous day to 'hey, how's life? Alright? Yeah, keep it that way, buddy' he did, anyway.

Still, he could've said a bit more than that. To just unload that much weird on him and not follow it up with anything else... was Yu just screwing with him? That wasn't an unfamiliar concept to Yosuke. Not knowing for certain made it worse, somehow.

Before long, everyone else in the class thought Yu was something of an icon despite being there for less than a full day. His flippant nature seemed to have no bearing on this whatsoever. With the consistent quality of his answers in class (many of which going so smoothly they sounded practiced to Yosuke, or as if he'd swallowed the set textbooks or something) when teachers called on him throughout their classes, they probably loved him too.

He was so natural. It pissed Yosuke off.

He thought Yu was lucky enough to transfer at the start of the year and not smack-dab in the middle like he did himself. He would've liked to think Yu would struggle to adapt and settle a lot more if he had. Maybe they could have bonded over being sort-of-outcasts. It was too much to have him both comfortable _and_ adored. Yosuke felt conned.

The final bell rang out and thus Yosuke welcomed the end of the school day with open arms. Despite the complete drag to get there, at least it was still _there_. Hope remained. He glanced at his phone. There was still no word from his dad about any shifts he had to pick up, and no one had yet come to him saying they were 'really sorry' but they were lazy pieces of shit who didn't want to work and could he cover their shift for them, 'thanks, see ya', so things were good enough. Life could've been much worse.

There was a whistle from behind him. Of course, Satonaka was still a thing - in her green jacket with her stupid buttons. She was standing there with the exact same expression as the previous day, though leaning more towards impish, the DVD case in her slowly rotating hand.

Yosuke let out a muffled sob, or maybe that was his wallet. It just couldn't handle buying her that much meat. Not _again_.

This did turn out to be true, for even one steak would have had Yosuke teetering head-first into the abyss of bankruptcy. He had little choice but to take Satonaka to the Junes foodcourt and discount his way into a peace offering. He extended the generic own-brand soda towards her, complete with complimentary bendy straw and extreme apprehension. In a surprising break of character, she grunted and accepted it anyway with a slight cough. There might have been a 'cheap' snuck beneath it. He took this as a victory, and his whole body agreed.

Feeling he may as well enjoy this moment of brief respite, Yosuke collapsed back into a chair. He closed his eyes as he let out a sigh of relief. One eye soon cracked open to scan the food court around them. With Satonaka placated to some degree, the place was pretty quiet. There weren't any kids in the play area, at least. It was a small blessing. He couldn't do with having them potentially setting Satonaka off again. Still, Yosuke gave a much heavier sigh once he finished looking.

_No sign of her today, either... what is up with her?_

"Not many people out, is there?" Satonaka piped up from nowhere. She, too, was looking around, though not for the same reason.

"Yeah... I guess what happened to Yamano has everyone all spooked."

The girl's brow furrowed at the topic. "It _is_ kind of scary, though. Who would do something like that? And in a town like this, too..."

"Eh, don't try to figure out why killers kill people. Either way, looks like even some nowhere town like Inaba isn't as safe as we figured."

Satonaka returned to her soda, worrying the straw with her lips. Yosuke, meanwhile, felt his mind remain firmly on the girl absent from this scene. It was odd for her to not be here; Yosuke was fairly certain this was her shift unless she swapped with someone...

Before long, Satonaka brightened up again and spoke again. "Hey, didja hear the rumour going around right now?"

"Wh— huh?" Yosuke blinked out of his reverie, and narrowed his eyes at her. He already didn't like the sound of this. "About...?"

"I'm not sure on the details, but... people are saying that if you look at your TV when it's really rainy, at midnight, you'll see your _soulmate_." She took a long drink of her soda through the straw, staring wide-eyed at him over the sucking noise for an odd effect. "Or something."

Yosuke gave this idea a few more seconds of consideration more than it probably deserved, which could have been zero, or maybe some minus number. "That seems _so_ legit that it sort of just... looped right back around again, straight into bullshit."

"Oh, wait, yeah - I think the TV's gotta be turned off, too."

"Nevermind, _now_ I believe you! The stuff shows up only when the TV is off, of course. Should've said so."

Amazed sarcasm was the intended feel of Yosuke's response as he crossed his arms and legs. Going by Satonaka's response, all he managed was some form of agitated incredulity. "Has anyone ever told you how funny you _aren't_? Seriously." This was something Yosuke didn't want to answer, or think about for that matter. She saved him from both after a glance up at the heavy clouds. "I haven't tried it yet, but I might do it tonight at this rate. Anyway, you should try it too."

"...Why?"

Satonaka swallowed her soda with a loud gulp, and a slight wince at the carbonation as it stung her nose. "Because you have nothing else to do."

Not even a question. So, basically, 'I have nothing to do, so obviously _you_ don't, either'! Yosuke scoffed; so typical of a bored, boring town populated by people who were even worse off. As if Satonaka would know any better – he might've had a late shift to cover! Or a _life_ , with _things_ that needed doing!

Which was the exact reason why, precisely seven hours and forty-three minutes later, he found himself sat in a hunch in front of his television set in near complete darkness with _the_ _heaviest_ rain in _forever_ battering against his windows and ceiling, because it was all he ever really was, wasn't it? Bored, boring, worse off, and probably lots of other things.

Yosuke had wasted most of this waste of time with repeated checking of the TV to see if it was, in fact, turned off (it always was) and by considering possibilities with a sliding scale of scepticism (would an image only show if the TV was unplugged, or was he a bonafide moron for doing this?). He'd ran out of things to snack on and he couldn't risk another kitchen trip this late at night. Only if he wanted to risk seeing his dad coming flying through the wall fist-first from across the hall or something.

Damn. Satonaka needed better taste in movies, and Yosuke really needed to stop succumbing to their influence.

He sighed and crawled back over to his coffee table. After planting himself on a cushion, his eyes hovered over the screen of his phone, still lit up from checking the time what must only have been mere moments ago. This was getting ridiculous – well, even more than it already was, anyway.

_What compelled me to try this crap, again? Satonaka always was so full of it._

And yet there he was, like he was expecting something to happen. Yosuke couldn't settle on whether this made him bored or extremely pitiful. He groaned and repositioned himself on his cushion, chin propped by an elbow on the table.

Four minutes remained.

_I wonder if she's sat like this in front of her own TV, and just staring at the screen like it's gonna dropkick her or something..._

Three minutes. He changed position again, hands supporting him from the floor behind him.

_Oof... on further reflection, her doing the kicking is more likely._

Three minutes still.

_I hope Saki's alright..._

He felt a frown form involuntarily on his face. It had been some time since Yosuke last saw Saki, the fellow part-timer at Junes he was quite fond of. His worry settled in a frown over his face. It really wasn't like her to skip work, yet she was nowhere in sight earlier in the day. Was she off sick?

His thoughts cut short when the TV flickered to life. Yosuke bumped back down onto planet Earth as he stared at the screen. "The hell...?"

Hah! Of course, he'd sat on the remote. Yosuke snorted and moved to tug it out from under the pillow, and gave a derisive laugh as he looked at the device in his palm.

00:00 blinked back at him from the LCD screen of his phone. Yosuke blinked too.

_Wait—_

The TV _bloop_ ed and _blipp_ ed again. Yosuke's phone almost slipped out of his hand in his alarm.

He forced his head closer. The light in the middle of the TV wasn't red or green, just _gone_ altogether. Was it broken? Yosuke didn't get enough time to decide; the breaks in the static invading screen began to increase in number, revealing glimpses of an image behind it.

Something about this seemed real skeevy – and not of the late night viewing variety Yosuke would have expected. Whatever this channel was showing looked like no show he'd ever seen before. He saw long, yellow hair – wait, everything was sort of yellow. Still, if he squinted, he could make out a... a uniform, of some kind— a school uniform? Theirs? And a skirt—

A weird feeling came over Yosuke, but what was it? He couldn't have seen this girl before somewhere, surely—

_Oh._

Yosuke looked to his phone again.

_Oh... oh, damn._

He had to be sure.

Yosuke quickly unlocked it and scrolled through back through his files until he came across what he was looking for. It was a photo of all the Junes part-timers standing together in their aprons from a few months back. He pinched around Saki's smiling face to enlarge it. Hand shaking, he held his phone up to the screen. Now he was certain.

_Damn damn damn_ damn.

He fell onto his back and covered his face.

"God _damn it_ ," he groaned through his arm.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, did you watch it last night?"

"Mm."

"I still can't believe it - I think I _actually_ saw something! Creepy or _what_?"

"Sure."

Satonaka scowled at him. Having her hands anywhere other than on her hips was becoming rarer when it came to conversing with Yosuke. "Are you even listening?"

He was, but his own thoughts took siege of his attention span. Satonaka confronted him at the first opportunity that morning, and Yosuke had nowhere near enough hours of sleep to be dealing with this. He didn't know how long he'd laid there last night, though the aches in his muscles and the fact that he woke up at all in the first place did attest to him falling asleep at some point. He had to have slept on the floor long enough for his neck and back to hurt like this.

"I'm not sure what to think of my soulmate being a girl, though..."

Yosuke choked on a breath and scrambled to his feet. Without thinking, he blurted out, "wait, you saw a _girl_? Who?!"

It should have been funny - now that Satonaka had his full attention at last, discomfort came off her in waves. Maybe the standing part wasn't that necessary.

"Um... I don't know. The picture wasn't that good." Her eyes struggled to meet his as she rubbed her arm. "I could only guess it was a girl 'cause of their... shape? They had a skirt... it might've been a school uniform. Maybe it was ours?"

So it might not have been Saki she saw, then. What made Yosuke think she saw her too, anyway? The girls hadn't even met each other - or maybe they had, he corrected mentally, because _Inaba_. He groaned and sank back into his chair, face flat on the desk. Satonaka peered down at him and raised her eyebrows.

"Did you see a girl, too?"

"Yeah, maybe, I dunno."

"'Course you did," came Satonaka's unimpressed response.

A moment of silence later, Satonaka returned to her seat. Yosuke safely assumed that even someone as tenacious as her could hold a conversation with someone's hairline for only so long.

He didn't know what to make of this information. Sure, Yosuke always knew that he liked Saki - a lot, in fact. But even then, 'like' didn't feel like an adequate way of describing how he felt about her. Saki was the only one aside from his mother that spoke to him like he was another human being rather than the walking embodiment of 'corporate shill'. Not only that, but she was sweet and kind and funny whenever it was appropriate. Sure, she made a few digs at him here and there, but Yosuke could tell they were in good humour. He just _knew_.

Did this mean they were really _soulmates_ though? _This_ he did not know. He still doubted whether or not it really was Saki he saw last night. Maybe Yosuke was more tired than he thought and this was all a result of wishful thinking on his part. But did this mean he wanted them to be soulmates?

All of this plagued Yosuke throughout the day, making next to no headway on how he felt on the matter even by the time the final bell rang. To his misfortune, Amagi was nowhere in sight again, leaving Satonaka to wander back over to his desk for the second time that day.

"Yo," she announced.

"You're talking to me again," he said.

"Yeah, 'cause I need you for something. Let's go!"

Yosuke lacked the energy to fight against this sort of thing today, so he let Satonaka take him... wherever she wanted to go. Regrettably, this turned out to be Junes. There was truly no escape from this hellhole, was there?

"Exactly why am I here again? I don't even have work today." Which made this whole thing substantially worse; Yosuke had few afternoons to himself as it was without them all being stolen away by retail or little bob-haired demons.

"You do now," Satonaka chirped, puffing out her chest. In a way, it could have been cute if it were someone else. "You're gonna show me some _TVs_."

Yosuke breathed in deeply. A tinny voice echoed around the store from the tannoy for 'assistance in the electronics department, thank you' followed by the 'Every day's great' jingle. A child shrieked somewhere in the distance. Yosuke breathed out. "Right. _Why_?"

"We're thinking of getting a new one. Why else? I've got better things to do than have you waste my time."

Yosuke's mouth fell open in indignation. He had a good response to this – with expletives and everything – but Satonaka sped off into the store's depths before he could even raise a finger. Probably to leave him behind on purpose and ruin it for him. After recapturing her and leading her towards the TV section this time ("That was _not_ there before!"), he watched with a wary eye as Satonaka approached the largest of the monitors with beady eyes.

"There are more numbers here than I was expecting," she said, frowning at the prices.

"Well, what kind do you want?" Yosuke sighed. "You're looking at all the high-end stuff, here. Of course it's gonna be pricey."

"Yeah, but I don't us to get a cheap piece of crap, either!"

In his desperation for some sort of escape, he spied the rows of CDs just a few gondolas over. Yosuke slid out of Satonaka's peripheral vision and dashed over towards the music samples. He jammed the headphones over his ears as best as he could with his own already around his neck. He jabbed at the play button before the volume received the same treatment. Something generic, poppy, _anything_ to drown out the–

"Hey, are those ones 'high def'?" came Satonaka's voice through the music regardless. She sounded as if she was coming closer. _Oh, give me strength._ "...Or are you high _deaf_? Geez, it's like you won't listen to _anything_ that isn't coming out of a set of headphones."

He was about to counter with an accusation that all odds pointed to Satonaka not knowing what 'high def ' even meant. But of course, this also died a swift death, and she continued her opportunity kill-streak as she wandered back over to stare at the televisions some more.

What a pain in the ass this was turning out to be.

Another sound cut across the lyrics. Quiet, barely coherent, but it wasn't a noise...

"H... help..."

_Weird sample for a track like this_ , Yosuke thought. It didn't match the song in the slightest.

"Someone... hel...p...."

Frowning, Yosuke moved to replace the headphones. The voice became clearer as he took them off – so it was coming from something else. He looked around. Satonaka was still glowering at the price tags as if they'd personally offended her. The TVs in operation displayed terrific landscapes of tulips (the sole flower other than sunflowers, daisies and roses that Yosuke could identify) and other dumb nature stuff. He moved to re-join her, listening out for the origin of the words that were increasing in volume with each step forward. They seemed to echo more, too, but as he stood right in front of one of the inactive screens, it stopped.

But it came back, loud and clear this time, almost as if—

"Sensei, are you out there?"

—the flowers were _talking_.

"Y-You gotta hurry, I think he's still—"

_What even_ is _this?_

"...Huh?"

Yosuke jolted - did he ask that out loud? And did the tulips _reply_? His eyes darted around to see if anyone was there to witness this moment of insanity. No one seemed to be looking, thankfully. He scanned the crowd around him again, this time for some dumb kid who might have been trying to wind him up. This didn't seem to be the case either.

"Are these flowers even _meant_ to be talking?" This time he actually felt those words coming quietly out of his mouth as he walked around the TVs in front of him, still trying to pinpoint the source.

"I may be beautiful and delicate but I am _not_ a flower! Hmph." The voice returned, clearly offended, from the inactive screen right by his ear and almost sent Yosuke flying backwards in alarm. "Wait, someone's out there? Oh, oh!" There was a noise that Yosuke could only describe as... snuffling. "Wait, wait— Sensei, is that you?"

Yosuke frowned in puzzlement. "'Sensei'? Who's that supposed to be?"

"H-Huh? _Hey_ , those aren't the dulcet tones of my sweet Sensei's voice!" the voice squawked. Yosuke caught the black screen rippling this time along with the sound. "Who are you? And how can you hear me?"

"'Dulcet'? Speak for yourself, dude." Yosuke sighed audibly, and then frowned at himself. He lowered his voice to a murmur. "Ugh, hold on, why am I having a conversation with a TV, again...?"

"Yeah, why _are_ you?"

Yosuke was _just_ thinking about how fortunate he was that Satonaka wasn't there to see what was going on. He should have caught on by now, really. She stood by him with an odd look. Yosuke wondered why she hadn't started kicking yet, because this was all she knew how to do other than chew meat and complain.

"I'm not a TV, either! Can't you see I'm a _bear_?"

Satonaka jumped at the noise with a yelp, while Yosuke gave a distracted, "not really, no— Chie, what are you _doing_ here?"  
  
"Well, of course you can't see!" the voice retorted. "But that's not what matters—"

"S-So I _did_ hear a weird noise!" The girl pointed accusingly at the TV and looked harder at Yosuke. "Hey, what gives?! What's it doing? And what's with the 'Chie' all of a sudden, huh?!"

"What, you think this is a _function?_ " retorted Yosuke, throwing both hands at the screen in disbelief. "Are you _seriously_ —"

"Listen, I thought I smelled someone else in here before, and I was right! It's the same guy! He's been chasing me around this whole time, I think I lost him by the—"

Yosuke still didn't understand anything from what it was talking about, why he could hear it and why he was still standing around listening and conversing with it, but he was becoming increasingly frustrated by the ordeal. He turned around to see there were a lot more people looking at TVs now, making it very cramped and harder to stay inconspicuous. Yosuke looked past a tall man to a bright-coloured sign that he hadn't seen before, and thinking back to the announcement earlier, he cursed. He'd forgotten; a special _was_ on that day.

He felt Chie prodding his shoulder to bring back his attention. "Hey, what're we gonna do? If it isn't meant to do this, someone's gonna hear— oof!"

The department was so crowded at this point, it didn't come as a surprise to Yosuke that someone must have bumped into her. Chie fell forward and her arms flailed torwards Yosuke in an attempt to support herself. Yosuke felt himself falling now, toppling towards the TV, and he threw his hands out to brace himself with a quick prayer that they wouldn't tip the thing over and smash it, his dad was going to be _so pissed_ if they did—

—except they didn't. Yosuke's hands went right through the screen, but not in any way he could ever have anticipated.

His hands didn't turn into a mess of blood and whatever the hell else went into TV screens. He wasn't being electrocuted, either. In fact, Yosuke likened the sensation to sticking his hand through a big soap bubble or something. There wasn't much of an opportunity to register this before he realised that the rest of him and Chie went after his arms. It was as if they were hurtling through a screen door rather than something with any real rigidity. The next thing they knew, yellow flooded their vision, and together they began to fall.

 

* * *

 

The panic flooding through Yosuke made it hard for him to pay attention to their surroundings. They were falling with increasing speed, and it didn't take long for something flat to become clearer and clearer beneath them. Yosuke attempted to ready himself for the landing. It became a problem when he struggled to rifle through the stupid trivia in his brain quickly enough to recall exactly what would be the best part of his body to land on. All that time he'd spent watching TV was _useless_ and now a TV was going to _kill_ him—!!

_**WHAM!** _

Both he and Chie slammed into the ground with a thud that sounded like it could break anything. Yosuke bolted upright and held a small mental celebration when he realised he hadn't busted his back after all. If he was any luckier, he'd be out of there with only the outlines of his keys and wallet tattooed onto his asscheeks, maybe. Chie seemed shaken, but not too harmed either. She got to her feet on unsteady legs, squinting around her.

"Where are we? I can't see anything—"

She paused, looking disturbed. Yosuke thought he knew why. Something felt off... _really_ off, not to mention the feeling that they weren't alone there. He could feel some sort of presence somewhere nearby. It was difficult to see anything, though; some sort of thick fog surrounded the two of them.

One vague shape could be discerned in the near distance. With delayed horror, Yosuke realised it was getting bigger— no, _closer_ to them. Some inhuman... _thing_ stood before them on two legs, in a red and white striped suit with big buttons on the front. Yosuke had no earthly clue what he was looking at. It looked like something that had rolled out from under a circus tent, or maybe some kind of bizarre stuffed animal.

"You guys are definitely _not_ Sensei," it grumbled with a voice similar to what they had heard coming from the TV. It got closer to Yosuke and attempted to sniff his face. Yosuke backed away from the wiggling nose with a speed he only thought he could manage in a situation of extreme terror and urgency. This round animal thing induced neither of these things, really; it was just _weird_. "Who are you?"

"Just _what_ are _you_?" Chie didn't seem scared or made uncomfortable by the thing's presence; she seemed rather irritated, actually. "Some kind of cat... monkey... thing..."

"I'm a _bear_ , _geez_ , it's not _that_ hard! Waaaait a minute. Your voices... could it be..." it gasped, and pointed an accusing finger at them. "Could it be you who threw that person in here before?!"

"Thr... what?"

"Did you not just see us... _fall_ in...?" asked Yosuke weakly.

"Well, maybe you had second thoughts!" huffed the supposed 'bear', folding its arms and looking cross at the pair of them. "How should I know? This could be a trick."

Chie raised her eyebrows. "But... how...?"

"I dunno— _you're_ the one asking me how the mind of a murderer works, _murderer._ "

"What," was all Yosuke could manage anymore. Everything was so confusingly painful... not to mention painfully confusing.

He tried to move his attention away from the weird bear, but this was hard to manage. With such a thick layer of mist around them, Yosuke may as well have tried to stare at a huge cloud to glean any kind of understanding from it. His eyes were drawn to the least obscured thing other than the bear(?), which was the floor at their feet. Yosuke regretted this almost at once.

Bodies. There were silhouettes of human bodies scattered around them in various positions. Most looked as if as if they'd all fallen and landed in circumstances no different than their own. Yosuke peered beneath his legs. Did they leave some, too, when they landed? What did this even mean?

An odd noise distracted Yosuke and he looked up again. The bear seemed to freeze, having made the weird yelp he heard just now. Its face looked stricken and its ears twitched, as if it heard something to worry about Yosuke and Chie didn't.

"D-don't tell me..." it whimpered as its eyes darted around. With unnatural speed for something its size, the bear appeared behind Yosuke, cowering around his side.

"What's the matter with you?" muttered Yosuke. He was bursting with questions at this point, and got ready to unload them on this thing breaching his personal space. But when he heard approaching footsteps, he stopped.

He looked up, and his breath caught at what he saw.

It was Yu Narukami, slowly walking towards them decked out in some wicked black frames. Yosuke didn't know exactly why he was admiring the dude's glasses of all things - this was so not the time - but going by the deathgrip on his jacket the bear definitely wasn't feeling them. He didn't think the bear was feeling that... sword, either? Yes, that was definitely a sword sheathed at Yu's hip. Great. Yosuke found himself utterly unsurprised by this image, for reasons he'd momentarily forgotten ( _why hello there, Dream G- ugh—_ The Guy _, god damn it, we've been over this already_ ), but still confused and worried as to why he had a sword _now_ , _outside_ Dream Land.

The bear's voice went very high, even as it whispered, "oh no, it's _him_... please help me...!"

"Na—  _Yu_? What're _you_ doing here?"

"Step away from it, Yosuke," the transfer student said at last, quieter than Yosuke anticipated.

"Why?" Chie asked, looking unsure as she glanced between the two parties. Yosuke forgot she was there until she spoke. "What's he done to you?"

He wasn't sure who he directed this at, but after looking again, Yosuke felt his eyes linger on the burned patches of fur and cloth on the supposed bear's body which escaped his notice before. He looked at Yu again, whose steely calm hadn't changed one iota from hours previous. This time, though, something almost threatening could be drawn from it.

The bear's mumbling was indecipherable. but Yu's answer was clear and cold. "Nothing for you to worry about. Move aside."

"Uh, we're not... moving anywhere." Yosuke didn't know why he was saying this, as if intending to defend the bear that was _just_ saying he killed somebody. But something felt amiss. "Look, can you just explain what's going—"

There was a sudden drop in what was already a low temperature. Yosuke heard Chie's shudder before one of his own wracked his system. Yu made an annoyed _tch_ as a darkness began to bloom around them.

The bear positively shrieked this time. "We can't stay here— hurry, this way!"

Yosuke felt a fuzzy hand grab his own and yank him away, before Chie hastily grabbed the other one. As the frantic bear pulled them behind him, Yosuke watched over his own shoulder as the dark blobs surrounded Yu. When he became more and more indecipherable in the fog and blackness, the sharp sound of a sword being unsheathed cut through the air and he disappeared from sight.

Chie gasped. "Where'd he go? He was just there, and then—"

"Hey, is he gonna be alright?" Yosuke called up to the bear ahead, still squinting after where Yu had vanished.

"Stop worrying about _him_!" he shouted back in anger. "What about _us_?! Oh _no_ , there's more of them, why are they even _here_...?"

Yosuke cried out as he spied more of the strange blobs appearing under his rapidly moving feet. There was an oppressiveness about them, turning his veins to ice. Red dots glinted through the blackness and— oh god, were those meant to be _eyes_?

"What the hell?" Chie ended up jerking Yosuke's arm around leaping from foot to foot as they ran, trying to avoid stepping on anything. He heard a squelch and a squeal as he turned to face forward again, though he couldn't see anything at all. The bear seemed to be leading them further into... somewhere. They just kept running and running, almost without end.

This was weird, this whole situation was weird, and for some even weirder reason it all had Yosuke so _scared_ —

"Hey, where are the hell are we even going?" he shouted at last. The bear skidded to a stop as Yosuke and Chie bumped into him from behind.

"Oh, keep your fur on! I can't go on like this," it snapped with its back still turned to them. It seemed to be fidgeting with something. "Yes, yes, here—"

A blue paw came towards his face. Yosuke leaned away reflexively, but soon realised it wasn't trying to deck him. The bear was pressing something cool and hard into his forehead. He threw his hands up to catch it before it fell to the ground.

To his utter bewilderment, the bear had given him a pair of glasses. A strange and indescribable feeling came over him at the sight of the orange frames.

"Glasses? What—"

"Put them on, put them _on_ —"

"Okay, geez, hold on—"

Whatever he expected, it was _not_ for Yosuke to be able to see around him with sudden, astounding clarity. It was like the fog wasn't even there anymore. He looked around. They left the yellow area some time ago and found themselves somewhere more red this time. It did nothing to soothe Yosuke's nerves, instead agitating them.

A haunting familiarity pervaded this place, but Yosuke didn't feel the full grasp of this until he saw they were standing outside Souzai Daigaku. He had some certainty that this was definitely not where Souzai Daigaku was supposed to be, and no certainty whatsoever as to what it was doing here.

He found them to be in the middle of what he could only describe as the Inaba shopping district, except... not. Something, _everything_ , was too _off_ , too incorrect. There were all those buildings and storefronts, and they were fine, but the crimson lighting made them feel somehow corrupted. The family-owned establishments Yosuke had seen far too often by now were of varying colours, bright and exuberant for the sale of their items, but under these black- and red-striped skies they all presented themselves with a yellow tinge with no plausible source or explanation. There was a sinister edge about the district, and what would have been regarded by Yosuke caught on a bad day as dank and miserable was simply twisted now. If this was supposed to be Inaba, or some parody of it... he felt sick just standing there in the middle of it all.

"Hey, where—" He hadn't realised how dry his throat felt until his voice cut out when he called over to the bear. It was trying to force a swirly-eyed beaglepuss onto an unwilling Chie's face with some difficulty. Yosuke gave an even drier swallow before trying again. "What... is this meant to be?"

"Don't ask _me_. How am _I_ supposed to know?" the bear shot back irritably, nose twitching with a force that almost resonated. It grabbed its temples in what appeared to be frustration. "Aaugh, my bearings are all fluffed up!"

"Hey, this is... whoa." Chie had grudgingly put the silly glasses on in the end. Yosuke might have found this entertaining under more appropriate circumstances. The shock of what they revealed to her seemed to overwrite her initial surprise at what the glasses did. "Is this... it looks like Inaba, but... where are we, really?"

Yosuke didn't answer. Chie sounded something close to timid as she looked to him, helpless as to what to do. "Yosuke...?"

A trail of darkness lay both behind and ahead of them. The way forward, however, was not paved with blackened arms and crimson dotted eyes. The choice was made for them. With a rattled breath, Yosuke advanced.


End file.
